I came across this list on the way driving home to Washington from New Mexico, through Utah. I stopped into a bookstore in downtown Salt Lake City and found a little known book written by, what I consider, one of the most educated human beings born, by the name of Arthur Henry King.His book contained a "Reading List of a Lifetime."After pouring over Mr. Kings book, I spent the next several years in and out of book stores in Utah, Idaho, Washington, London and other places buying up his recommendations by the specific translators, reading and sometimes rereading them.This list is not to overwhelm the lifetime learner. The lifetime truth feaster will benefit by reading from the greatest books ever authored. The minds these books come from, were all stretched to the highest heights and all speak to the experience of forging ahead to our highest potential.The best translation is shown next to the books. These experts translate the work best using the important rhetoric found in the original works native language.

"The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation." ​Goethe​

Arthur Henry King

I am truly grateful for this mans influence in my life. After reading the books contained in the list below, I am more than convinced, this is a hugely important asset that should never be forgotten.As a boy growing up in England, his family was poor and living with those who would help. Arthur said they mostly felt uncomfortable living off the help of others. He was very aware of his family's "station" in life, in the particularly caste British society.Arthur immersed himself in reading the pre-nineteenth century literature in his fathers library. He recalls reading, age 8, as he walked to and from school. By the time he was 8 years old, he had read all of Charles Dickens.He was picked on in school for being different. He went on to great educational heights and high achievement.Besides English he spoke Swedish, French, and German, and read Italian, Spanish, Latin, Danish, and Norwegian.​He served as ambassador for his country in a middle eastern country. He said of that experience, he sometimes worried how someone could have easily falsely blamed him downstream his water supply.For 28 years he served on the British Council, an independent body which handles the educational and cultural work of the British government overseas. He was twice decorated by Queen Elizabeth for work he did on the council.He was friends with renowned author, TS Eliot. He recalls talking with Eliot about his conversion and marveling at the insincerity of his sincere friends conversion and conviction.Arthur taught at Lund and Stockholm Universities and was a visiting professor at several universities around the world.As a college professor, he saw kids coming in educated in pop culture, with memorized commercial jingles, pop music, and a knowledge of popular movies and movie stars.He decided to start an eight hour class that required the young students to do nothing for the entire class but read the classics.

"Our education nowadays is disintegrated. It is a means of pursuing at the highest level, things of less and less scope, in more and more detail. As soon as you specialize to that point, you're no longer seeing the woods. You're not even seeing the trees. "The classics were there because they enabled one, by means of works of art, to get at the totality of a formal world in all its aspects. And that word, "totality," is the important word. ​It is the sense that one's life is totally meaningful." ​ ​Arthur Henry King

AHK Documentary

"A superficial wholeness that does not go to the depth of the horror that is in contemporary human life, at any age, cannot reach supreme art. You cannot have a successful reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia without all that goes before and all that comes after." ​ Arthur Henry King

Reading List of a Lifetime

Authors and books with an asterisk by them are the authors and books I suggest as a great place to begin.

I recommend buying all the books in the list, new or used, from Half Price books, Amazon etc... You may not get to all of them and you may choose to read some of them twice. Having them all on hand will give you choice to meet your needs.I guarantee you will find more than one book you cannot live without. ​